Lost Girls

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The CIA hated the Cellar. At least, those with high enough clearances to know of the Cellar’s existence hated it specifically. The rest of the employees of the sprawling intelligence organization only heard whispers of the Cellar and few had ever encountered one of its handful of operatives. And such encounters were never welcomed. The CIA liked to think of itself as the biggest, baddest man on the block and the concept, even if whispered, that there was someone, not as big, but meaner, out there did not sit well. That someone from another organization could slap down anyone in the CIA riled its members.

This, of course, was part of the overall problem that the Cellar was trying to overcome. The rivalries, the egos involved, between people and organizations that were supposed to work together in defense of the country.

Gant knew all this as he walked into the lobby of the new CIA headquarters in Langley. There were people he knew who served in Able Danger, a highly classified and compartmentalized part of Special Operations Command, that had identified a cell of the nine-eleven hijackers over a year before the event and wanted to relay the information to the FBI but had been denied permission to pass it on. Gant knew that Nero was chafing at the bit to expand the role of the Cellar from chasing down rogue operatives to breaking down the walls between the bureaucracies.

It was not something Gant felt positive about because he had a feeling that attempting to do that would have the reverse effect: suck the Cellar into the world of bureaucracy. He shoved these thoughts from his mind as he walked through the lobby and focused on the current situation.

They had parted company with Neeley at the airfield — she was on her way to the cache site to meet Bailey who had found a partial cache report. Once more the partial was worthless by itself listing only and Immediate Reference Point (IRP) of a road crossing railroad tracks and an Azimuth and Direction (A/D) of one hundred and sixty degrees and four hundred and twelve meters to the cache.

Given there were tens of thousands of rail-lines crisscrossing the country, this information was of little aid. It was another taunt according to Golden. Gant had not found that observation very insightful.

Golden was still with him, but so far she had been of limited use. If he took away all her contributions to the mission so far, nothing would be different in his opinion other than a couple of the people they had interviewed might feel a bit worse for the process. She had come up with the names of the three targets, but only as part of a possible group of sixteen. Gant had gotten the three names much more easily and quickly.

So Gant was ignoring her, focusing his attention on the mission. Two men had died today at the cache site — two innocent men who had only been doing their jobs. Two more innocent men had died this morning at the farm. So he was not in the best of moods when one of the many suits moving through the lobby came toward him and stuck out his hand.

“Mister Gant?”

Gant ignored the hand. “Yes.”

“Deputy Director Roberts is waiting for you.”

Gant simply nodded and the agent, after a moment of confusion, lowered his hand and turned on his heel, leading them toward an elevator. As they walked Gant glanced to his right at the memorial wall. He’d seen it before. Eighty-three stars adorned the wall, one for each CIA officer who’d been killed in the line of duty. Gant knew that even today, thirty-five of the names represented there had never been made public, still classified, even in death.

Memorials to the dead, he mused, thinking back to the wall at Bragg, as they got into the elevator. Bureaucracies seemed to go for those. While they were touted as testaments and honor to those who they represented, Gant believed they were designed more with the living, who would see them, in mind. Everyone wanted to be immortal, at least in thought.

The Cellar had no such memorial. In fact, Gant had no idea how many people were in the employ of the Cellar. He worked for Nero and he had always worked alone prior to this mission. Bailey had always been his mission briefer. When he needed logistical support, he used the power of the Cellar to commandeer it from whatever various government agency he needed to.

The elevator came to a halt and the nameless flunky led them down a carpeted corridor to a door, which he rapped on lightly, then opened, beckoning them in. Gant slid by the man, Golden following and the door was shut behind them.

The room was dimly lit, the shades closed, only a small light in the corner pointing up illuminating it. A figure was seated in the chair behind the desk but that was all Gant could make out. He had memories of meeting Nero in his dimly lit underground chamber.

“Deputy Director Roberts?” Gant asked.

“Yes.” The voice was low, almost a whisper.

Another father in pain, Gant thought. He couldn’t see Roberts’ face as the man was deep in the shadow of his chair.

“My name is Gant. I’m from the—“

“The Cellar,” Roberts interrupted. “I’ve been waiting for someone to show up from that place.”

“If you’ve been waiting,” Gant said, “then you know who they are.”

“I’ve been getting reports,” Roberts said. “Lutz, Paine and Forten. We thought they were dead.”

Gant walked forward and sat down in one of the two seats in front of the desk. Golden took the other. He hoped that as a shrink, she would appreciate the importance of silence and waiting, letting the other person do the talking. So far, she seemed to.

Roberts reached forward and turned on a desk lamp. Gant wasn’t surprised by the man’s appearance. His face was long and drawn with deep, dark pockets under his eyes.

“My wife — ex-wife — is making all the funeral arrangements. I’m not invited.” He sighed deeply. “She doesn’t know, but she does know. She knows this had something to do with the job. I loved that about her when we were first married. That she knew things without me having to tell her. You know. Because I couldn’t tell her much at all about what I was doing. Now I hate it.”

Roberts reached out and picked up a letter opener, a miniature Samurai sword that he began to play with, flipping it through his fingers. “Yesterday I wondered if this was some sort of, I don’t know, mis-direction mission. A test. To see how I handled things. I’ve seen some strange shit in my time here at the Agency. But when my ex called me, I knew it was real. She was with the body in Alabama. I knew she’d never go along with anything about Caleigh. I knew then she was indeed dead.”

Gant glanced over at Golden. She looked thoughtful and concerned and he realized she was slipping back into her therapist mode. He turned back to Roberts. The man wasn’t looking at either of them. His eyes were on the flashing metal blade of the letter opener as he moved it about under the light.

“She’ll never forgive me.” He laughed, a dry, forced noise. “Not that it matters with Caleigh dead. I guess Caleigh will never forgive me either.”

Gant stirred. The waiting thing was all right, but it was time to get on task.

Roberts looked up. “Which one of them killed her?”

“We don’t know,” Gant lied. “One of them is dead now. Lutz.”

Roberts looked surprised, lifting ever so slightly out of his despair. “I didn’t hear that.”

“He died this morning,” Gant said, “trying to attack Lewis Foley of the State Department and his wife. Unfortunately, Foley and his wife were killed in the attack. As were two State Department security people. And two FBI HRT team members were killed today trying to find another girl who was kidnapped by these guys.”

Roberts slumped back in his seat, dropping the letter opener to the desktop. “Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Gant said. “So tell me what happened so we can get the other two.”

Roberts lowered his head, putting his hands on either side, rubbing his scalp. When he spoke it was so hard to hear him that both Gant and Golden had to lean forward in their chairs.

“It was relatively straightforward. Columbia. Drug trafficking. The DEA got the village elders in a major transport hub for the Cartel to turn. Promised them lots of cash, lots of aid. And protection from the local warlord. That was the key. So the team was sent in as protection. They were to take out the local warlord who was moving the drugs. We had a tip when he would be showing up to punish the villagers.”

“And?” Gant pushed, earning a hard glance from Golden.

“It was a stupid and naïve plan,” Roberts said.

“Of course it was,” Gant agreed. “Taking out the warlord would only delay the inevitable. But you didn’t care about that. What did you care about?”

“We had a deep cover agent,” Roberts said. “It’s like—“ he paused as he tried to think—“like a damn wedding cake.” He used his hands as he described. “Layers. Big on the bottom, lots of bottom feeders. Getting narrower as you go up. The warlord was like layer three up. But the agent, he was getting close to the, you know, the little statue of the couple on top. The key players. There are two people who run it all down there and we’d been after both of them for a very long time. And our agent was close to one of them.

“Took him three years. Three years deep under cover. Working from Miami down south, through the food chain of traffickers. Selling his fucking soul to go up the bad guy feeding chain. Selling his God-damn soul.”

Roberts was breathing hard and Gant looked over once more at Golden. She was perfectly still, watching. He turned back as Roberts continued.

“He was my older brother. Served in the Marines. We went through the Agency course together. I got promoted faster than him. He didn’t care. He wanted to be in the field. I wanted to be in charge.

“He left everything behind. His life. His wife divorced him after a year of only seeing him once and took the kid. He stayed on the job. He went under deeper than anyone we ever had. He was like one of those fucking people in a National Geographic show breathing God-damn special liquid mixture in their lungs so they could go deeper into the ocean depths than anyone else ever went before.

“There were times he was out of contact for so long, we figured he’d been discovered and killed. He went three months once without making contact. He couldn’t take the chance, he told me when he finally made a meet. And he had to do things, bad things, to prove his cover.”

“Like go to a village in the company of a warlord?” Gant asked, confused about why an undercover agent would be carrying a badge.

Roberts shook his head. “No.” He sighed. “That was me.”

Emily lifted her head, cocking it to one side to try to listen better. There was a distant sound, one she couldn’t quite make out yet. It was late afternoon to judge by the shadow that had climbed up the eastern side of the wood.

Distant thunder? But it was steady and getting closer.

Emily got to her feet and went toward the side of the enclosure that seemed to be closest to the approaching rumble. The entire wood structure began to vibrate.

Earthquake? Emily had never experienced one. But it seemed to steady and non-stop. And it was moving, coming closer, getting louder. There was another sound now, underlying the rumble, almost like metal on metal. Getting hearer at a rapid pace. It was indeed metal on metal she suddenly realized.

The blast of the train’s whistle caused her to jump, it was so close and unexpected.

“Help!” Emily screamed. “Help me!”

Utter frustration blanketed her as the train rumbled by, very close by the sound, yet she knew her yells were drowned out by the roar of the train’s engine and the rattle of its wheels on the metal tracks.

Emily pounded her fists on the wooden panel as the train went by. People were so close, yet they might as well have been a hundred miles away. The train must have been a long one because it sounded like it was right next to her for over five minutes, then finally the sound began to recede. Emily listened, ears straining, until finally silence ruled once more.

Emily shook her head as she walked back to the center and sat down. She couldn’t let it get to her. She had a feeling the bad man had specifically picked this location so that she could hear the train come by so close — suddenly she realized what she was enclosed in. A water tower from the old days, when trains needed water for their steam engines.

Emily took several deep breaths. If she could get out of this, she could be rescued. She was close to people. At least there were people when a train passed. She looked at the bolt, the chain, the shackle and the lock. As before, the weakest part was the lock. And she still had one under-wire left. Emily stretched her hands out, feeling the pain from the still un-healed cuts she’d inflicted on herself with her last attempt.

She didn’t care. She had to do something.

There was another bright side to her current location, she realized as she pulled the remains of her bra off and began working the other wire free. She wasn’t being watched.

“What happened?” Gant asked.

Roberts ran a hand across his forehead, the fingers shaking ever so slightly. “Mike — my brother — had a line on one of the two top Cartel leaders in Colombia. He’d been going after him for three years, like I told you. I mean, these guys are like ghosts. They let others stand out in front and take the public heat and the hits. These guys are the real power and to get to meet one of them, well, it’s damn near impossible if you hadn’t been in their inner circle for decades. And Mike had a meeting scheduled with one of them. You have no idea what he had to do in order to get that meeting set up.”

“Actually, I probably do,” Gant said. “He had to prove himself and the only way to do that is with blood.”

Roberts looked startled, then nodded. His eyes shifted back and forth and Gant knew what he was about to hear would haunt Roberts until the day he died, but Gant didn’t care. Whatever had been done had most likely gone wrong and now a lot of other people were paying the price.

“We knew going in it was going to get dirty. We had to weigh things. It was already nasty on the street level with the drugs and the money getting channeled to terrorists. Most people don’t know it, but there is a definite link between drug money and terrorists.”

Gant noted the tone of justification that was creeping into Roberts’ voice. The man was going to spend many sleepless nights trying to convince himself of what he was trying to convince them of right now. Gant also knew that there had been definite links between the US government and drug money when it had been expedient. Money was money was the feeling at times.

“For the greater good,” Gant said. He kept his tone level. In reality, he didn’t condemn Roberts. He knew Nero had often made very hard decisions, always for the greater good of the country. And Gant had been on some missions where the price paid had been very high, beyond what was acceptable in the ‘normal’ world. He had long ago left the normal world behind. For the first time, Gant realized with a degree of surprise, he was almost happy that the targets had kidnapped Emily Cranston. It made the ethics of the current Sanction very cut and dry.

“Yes,” Roberts said, anxious for any sign of empathy. “We actually held a meeting. Myself, the Director of Operations and the Chief of Direct Action. To decide how much we were willing to give up to get Mike in place.”

“So how many lives did you decide it was worth?” Gant asked. He could see Golden taking this in, her eyes wide. Time for her to grow up, Gant thought.

“We knew it would take at least one,” Roberts said. “We were willing to go as high as three.”

Golden couldn’t remain silent. “What is wrong with you people?”

“It’s the way the real world works,” Roberts said. “You want another nine-eleven?” He didn’t wait for an answer. Now that it was out on the table, he seemed anxious to be done with talking about it. “It wasn’t going to be random and we agreed that whoever we gave up was going to be dirty. Someone who was already betraying us. So Mike gave up a dirty DEA agent to the Cartel.”

“The one who had brokered the deal with the village,” Gant said, starting to see the pieces falling into place.

“Yes. Except we didn’t know about that deal. We just knew this guy was working an op against the Cartel, mid-level, but he was also taking bribe money. He was giving up who the Cartel told him to give up. Essentially getting rid of their competitors.

“We were working very high-level. So we were taken by surprise when we finally got wind of what was planned. Mike had already tipped off the Cartel about the agent. Mike and a couple of Cartel guys picked him up. Besides, it was a stupid plan, as you pointed out.”

Roberts licked his lips and his eyes were downcast. “They took him to a place — a place where the Cartel extracted information from people. And punished those who got in their way. They tortured him. That’s when they found out about the deal. But even the agent didn’t know that the team had been scheduled to go in and take out the warlord. That was being generated by the higher-ups in the DEA in Panama City. Who, of course, didn’t know about our op.”

Roberts voice went up slightly. “We couldn’t tell them. It was too dangerous. So the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing. The Cartel decided to punish the village. And they wanted it to be known that the DEA could not be trusted. So they wanted someone to go in there with a badge, standing with the warlord. Mike said he could take care of that. And he sent a message to me. Along with the kidnapped DEA agent’s badge. So I went.”

“What happened to the agent?” Golden asked.

Stupid question, Gant thought but didn’t voice.

“He disappeared and we assume they killed him. Which would have actually been merciful after the damage they probably had done to him during torture. I’ve seen what they do to people. Same as they sent a message by what they did in that village.”

“Which was?” Golden pushed.

Roberts eyes got distant as he remembered. “They killed pretty much everyone. Let a couple of old women go free so they could spread the story that the DEA was not to be trusted.”

“How many people killed?” Golden demanded.

“Fifty. Sixty. I didn’t count.”

Golden sat back as if she had been punched in the sternum. Gant ignored her.

“And the Special Forces team?” Gant asked.

“When they spotted me they called it in to Task Force Six which bounced the query to the Embassy. The duty officer knew I was down there. He didn’t know why or what for, but he called me on my satellite phone. I ordered the mission to be aborted. If those God-damn guys had just followed orders, everything would have been all right.”

“Except for the dead DEA agent and villagers,” Golden said.

“It’s a war,” Roberts said. “Sometimes there are casualties.”

“So Caleigh was a casualty of war?” Golden asked.

Gant could see the question strike home as Roberts flinched.

“Why are they going after family members and not the people directly responsible?” Gant asked.

Roberts shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“To cause emotional pain,” Golden said. She was staring hard at Roberts. “It’s working, right?”

“It’s working,” Roberts admitted.

Gant tried working through all the pieces. “Did your brother get the Cartel leader?”

Roberts let out a deep breath. “No.”

“So it was all a waste,” Golden said.

“Is your brother still under cover?” Gant asked.

“No. The whole thing fell apart. He got pulled out and is working here at Langley now.”

“And the warlord?” Gant asked.

Roberts looked startled. “What about him?”

“What happened to him?”

Roberts hesitated and Gant felt a surge of anger. “Just God-damn tell me,” he snapped, surprising Golden with his anger.

“I tried to use him as another angle of attack on the Cartel leader,” Roberts said. “It didn’t work so we pulled him out into protective custody.”

Gant rubbed a hand against his temple. What a cluster-fuck. “So he’s safe. Where?”

“We have a secure compound where we keep people like him.”

Gant slapped the top of the desk. “Where?”

“Maine.” Roberts frowned. “Why?”

“Our targets are Special Forces. Don’t you think they’re going to finish their original mission?”